Analysis: Trump shows no sign of curbing the insults

Donald Trump suffers his largest drop in polls after week of controversy.

Donald Trump’s support among Republicans has dropped 12 points in less than a week, marking the presidential hopeful’s biggest decline since he started leading the field in July, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. DES MOINES, Iowa — Political pros in this state are not foolish enough to pick a winner this far out from the caucuses (I am: It will be Ted Cruz, whose mix of frank religiosity and anti-establishment zeal is a good fit for the Iowa Republican electorate, and practically no other) but they do love their typologies.A fraternal group of NYPD officers who are Muslim issued a strong rebuke this week to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, after he suggested all people of their faith should be put on a government watch list.

Trump is still in the lead, with 31% of people surveyed naming him as their preferred candidate in a rolling poll over five days that ended on 27 November. — Donald Trump’s wife campaigned with him for the first time in South Carolina on Tuesday, telling voters she loved them and saying her husband would be “the best president, ever.” “Isn’t he the best?” Melania Trump asked the crowd of thousands in Myrtle Beach, flanked by her parents and three of the businessman’s children. “We love you.” Unlike come of his rivals’ spouses, Trump’s wife has until this point chosen to stay largely behind-the-scenes, though Trump mentions her often at events.

They’re everywhere on cable news, often explaining to cameras why nothing The Donald says – no matter how outrageous or divergent from established facts – will change their view that he’s the guy needed to shake up Washington’s political culture. Trump’s family left the stage before the Republican presidential hopeful launched into more than an hour of criticism of both his GOP rivals and the Obama administration. But by word 300, he’d already made the comment that prompted a backlash from Univision — a backlash that drew new attention to his hard-line stance on immigration and, by extension, moved him into first place in the polls. Following the attacks, Trump told an NBC News reporter that he would support a plan requiring all Muslims within the United States to be registered to a special database, which his critics likened to the mandatory registration of Jews in Nazi Germany.

Calling President Barack Obama a “divider” who has done nothing to unite the country, Trump also again called out Hillary Rodham Clinton as lacking the “strength or the stamina” to lead the country. I mean, we should have a lot of systems.” After the startling remarks stirred controversy, Trump wrote on Twitter, “I didn’t suggest a database – a reporter did.

Marco Rubio, he said, is “weak on immigration, really weak.” A few minutes into his remarks, Trump also called up on stage an impersonator he spotted in the crowd. By most accounts, the Republican candidates are competing for control of three “lanes”: Hard-Core Evangelicals (HCE), who think the GOP’s main problem is a lack of fighting spirit; Practically Minded Evangelicals (PME), who are socially conservative but value electability; and Terry Branstad Republicans (TBR), who, following in the footsteps of a popular and effective governor, want the largest tent possible consistent with their convictions (and feel the HCEs are going off the deep end).

We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America.” “Don’t let these people use hate to promote their agenda. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has seen his poll numbers drift downward and now trails Trump by more than half, with just 15% of Republicans polled saying they would vote for him in the same 27 November poll. According to the RealClearPolitics rolling average of major surveys, he’s currently the choice of 27.7 percent of Republican voters – almost eight percentage points up on second-place Ben Carson. Jeb Bush campaigned about 160 miles away in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where he collected endorsements from local elected officials and dismantled Trump’s immigration plan.

He’s now supported by 25 to 30 percent of the 25 to 30 percent of Americans who self-identify as Republicans, notes data guru Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight. Constitution.” A poster to the site named “MrnMrs Wolf” reacted, “You cannot change ignorant people and their frozen minds … because they are brain washed by media.” The group went on to post: “No one speaks about or give examples about the Muslim men and women serving in [the armed force].

Talk of a wall and “making Mexico pay for it,” while deporting 11 million people, Bush said, appeals to voters’ frustrations but does little else. “It might make you sound good,” Bush said. “It might make you look like the strong guy. … It’s not going to happen. Scott Walker, it is generally believed, flamed out because (among other reasons) he did not “own his lane.” Based on polling and anecdote, HCEs are breaking toward Cruz. Let’s get real with this and have a solution that’s reality based.” At an earlier stop about an hour’s drive west in Spartanburg, Bush expressed disappointment that a black protester was physically assaulted at a recent Trump rally in Alabama.

Trump later said Mercutio Southall Jr. “maybe … should have been roughed up.” “Look, you don’t see that happening at my (events),” Bush said. “I’m trying to inspire people that life can get better for them. And TBRs — a shrinking proportion of Iowa’s GOP electorate — are still divided among a few candidates (many politicos close to Branstad, including his son, are in the Chris Christie camp). His lead did start to slip a bit in September and October — but that was because Ben Carson was gaining ground more than it was because Trump was faltering. I’m not trying to play on their fears.” “Seventy percent of those people back there are absolutely total scum,” Trump said Tuesday, gesturing to the press area at the back of the arena, getting a roar and applause from the crowd. This brings us to our second point: If Trump is going to win either the nomination or the general election, he will have to build on his current base.

Cruz is currently benefiting from a common but specious conservative argument — that recent GOP presidential candidates have lost because they weren’t conservative enough. Given the perceived political vulnerability of Hillary Clinton, might it be possible to choose and elect a “real” conservative this time around, defined as the rejection of compromise at the highest decibel level? Cruz has the decibel part mastered, and has moved right on immigration in an attempt to sew up conservative support. “He goes where he needs to go,” one Republican strategist told me. Rubio is gaining steam in Iowa, on the strength of a perception that his next-generation conservatism matches up well against Clinton’s old-time liberalism.

Which is the third and final point here: Something huuuggge would have to change in this calculation for Trump to sit in the Oval Office in an official capacity. During recent visits, he has emphasized his role as a conservative revolutionary — which is not easy for anyone once part of the immigration-reform “Gang of Eight.” And since then he has also moved rightward on immigration, demonstrating how Trump’s nativism has pulled many in the GOP toward restrictionism. Perhaps more important, neoconservative foreign-policy hawks, general establishment Republicans, and current GOP lawmakers might be inclined to sit on their hands.

And the calculations of all the candidates appealing to evangelicals are complicated by Carson — whose autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” is sometimes used as a textbook by homeschoolers. But will people who have probably never participated in a caucus trudge on a cold night to a high school cafeteria to support a candidate who isn’t part of any ideological movement, other than the Trump-should-run-everything movement?